Recent Trend on Bioremediation of Polluted Salty Soils and Waters Using Haloarchaea

Abstract

Pollution of soils, sediments, and groundwater is a matter of concern at global level. Industrial waste effluents have damaged several environments; thus, pollutant removal has become a priority worldwide. Currently, bioremediation has emerged as an effective solution for these problems, and, indeed, the use of haloarchaea in bioremediation has been tested successfully. A bibliographic review is here presented to show the recent advances in bioremediation of polluted soil and wastewater using haloarchaea. Several aspects related to the publications in the context of bioremediation and the innovative proposal of using haloarchaea are also analyzed. The results obtained claim that most of the countries show an alarming contamination issue, which focuses the finance into research about environmental friendly remediation approaches to solve this problem. Concerning bioremediation, strategies to treat soils and polluted waters have been much more studied than bioremediation processes addressed to industrial residues. Publications about bioremediation mainly comes from USA, China, and India at the time of writing this work. However, works using haloarchaea in bioremediation came from Kuwait and Spain. Haloarchaea have been investigated as a potential tool for industrial and environmental purposes. Further research is needed to elucidate the optimal growth conditions and environmental parameters for this proposal.